Revision as of 18:32, 24 August 2010

Contents

Access

In the backend of Joomla! use either Menus -> Menu Manager or the icon Menus from the controlpanel.

Description

The Menu Manager controls how Joomla!'s menus will look and act.

Screenshot

Column Headers

Checkbox. Check this box to select one or more items. To select all items, check the box in the column heading. After one or more boxes are checked, click a toolbar button to take an action on the selected item or items. Many toolbar actions, such as Publish and Unpublish, can work with multiple items. Others, such as Edit, only work on one item at a time. If multiple items are checked and you press Edit, the first item will be opened for editing.

Title. The name of the item. For a Menu Item, the Title will display in the Menu. For an Article, Section, or Category, the Title may optionally be displayed on the web page. This entry is required. You can open the item for editing by clicking on the Title.

Menu type. (Former 'Unique Name') The menu type is the unique identifier of a given menu and is used manly on the menu modules.

Published. Amount of the current included and published menu items.

Unpublished. Amount of the current number of items that are not published or publicly available.

Trashed. Amount of the current number of items that have been deleted, but not purged from the trash manager

Modules Column. Because all menus are also modules, and can have more than module associated with them, this column lists the number of modules associated with the menu.

ID. The ID number. This is a unique identification number for this item assigned automatically by Joomla!. It is used to identify the item internally, for example in internal links. You can not change this number.

Toolbar

At the top right you will see the toolbar:

The functions are:

New. To create a new menu, click the "New" button. You can enter a title, menu type, and a description about the purpose of the menu.

Edit. The "Edit" button allows you to change the title, menu type, and description for the selected menu.

Delete. To delete a menu (and all included menu items), select the checkbox, and then the "Delete" button. You will be given one last chance to change your mind. If you're sure you want to delete the menu, click the delete button one last time.

Rebuild.

Options. Opens the configuration window for the Extension Manager. In this window you can set Extension Manager access permissions for each user group specified in your Joomla! installation.

Help. Opens this Help Screen.

Quick Tips

It is expedient to give a descriptive title for new menus because, later, you will see it in the Backend Menus menu. It is a good idea to fill in the Description field with information about the menu. If you enter a short title in the Module title field, you can identify the menu's module using that title in the Module Manager.

Though you can create a copy of a selected menu by clicking the Copy toolbar button, you can make another instance in the Module Manager as well.

When you create a new menu, use only English alphanumeric characters without space in the Unique Name field. It is a good idea using only a-z, 0-9 and underscore (_) characters. Please read the tooltips as well.

If you don't enter a Module title, no module will be created and the menu cannot be displayed in the front end. However you can use the Module Manager later to create a new mod_mainmenu module, and assign it to the menu.

If you delete an existing menu, do not forget that all the menu items of the respective menu will be also deleted.

The Main Menu has your default menu item, so it should not be deleted. The default menu item is your home page, and your site will not function if it is deleted. If you change the default menu item, make sure that you don't delete that menu item either! The menu with the default menu item is marked with an asterisk (*) in the Menus menu. More information can be found at the Menu Manager page